Rural Poverty, Development and the Environment: The Case of North-East Thailand

This paper aims to identify some of the pressures being exerted by rural poverty, development and modernization in a fragile, ecologically marginal environment. Environmental factors have been sig- nificant in the underdevelopment of North-East Thailand, resulting in widespread rural poverty. The problems presented by the physical environment have in recent years been compounded by a high rate of population growth and the growing scarcity of cultivable land. The increas- ing marginalization of land holdings which has followed the encroachment of agriculture into upland and swampy areas has contributed both to declining levels of agricultural productivity and to widespread environ- mental depredation. Changing attitudes towards the natural environment can be explained by the physical environment in which farmers operate: the high levels of risk and uncertainty which beset agriculture in North-East Thailand in some ways preclude the investment of scarce financial resources for protec- tion, notwithstanding the longer-term impact on rural productivity. The paper identifies the need to confront simultaneously the factors which are contributing to environmental degeneration in North-East Thailand, but stresses the need for the economic plight of the rural poor to be also considered.